Nigeria Union of Journalists

8 results arranged by date

"Nobody is safe. Not the voter, not the journalist, not anybody!" The fears of Femi Adesina, president of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, is echoed by stakeholders and observers of Nigeria's general election. Amid the tension in the run up to presidential and federal parliamentary elections on March 28, and governor and state parliamentary elections on April 11, journalists can be easy targets.

Nigerian police arrested Emmanuel Fateman, assistant editor of the Abuja-based National Waves magazine, and Joseph Jolayemi, a graphics editor for the magazine,on December 16, 2014, and held them without charge for more than two months, according to news reports.

An identified State
Security Service agent publicly flogged a reporter on July 3, 2013, while he
was on an official visit to the Benue State Government House to deliver a press
invitation to the state governor's chief of staff, according to news reports.

Tags:

Four men in plainclothes claiming to be police
officers briefly detained three journalists inside an office of a college in
Aka Offot, a suburb of Uyo, the capital of Akwa Ibom state, on February 6,
2013, according to local journalists and news
reports. The journalists were reporting on allegations of mismanagement at
the federal government-run Science and Technical College, news reports said.

Nigerian soldiers beat Leadership
Newspapers reporter David-Chyddy Eleke, confiscated his camera, and arrested him
for taking pictures of the demolition of buildings in Awka, in Anambra State in
Nigeria's southeast region on September 6, 2012, according to local journalists
and news
reports.

Tags:

Hardly ever do Nigerian journalists get justice for assaults
suffered in the line of duty. But things may be set to change with the case of Benedict Uwalaka, a
photojournalist with Leadership
Newspapers, who on August 9 was brutally assaulted
at a government hospital in Lagos State. The first step toward justice came 22
days later, when Bayo Ogunsola, one of the assailants identified by Uwalaka,
was arraigned
in court on August 31 on a two-count charge of assault and destruction of the
journalist's camera. Ogunsola pleaded not guilty on both counts.

Tags:

A group of armed men attacked the office of the
local branch of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) in the southern city of
Warri on August 7, 2012, according to news
reports. The men came with kegs of gasoline and threatened to lynch
journalists and burn the office if they were not granted media coverage, news
reports said.